One of the writers I’m friends with on Facebook posted a you-have-to-read-this! message yesterday about a book, and when I went to check it out: yep. Baseball.

I hate baseball.

I don’t hate sports. I like football and basketball, and I’ve been to and enjoyed soccer games (FI-YUH!) and hockey games. I used to watch Wimbledon every summer and, once, I even watched golf on TV and understood and enjoyed what was going on. I don’t go out of my way to watch sports, and I usually like to have a team to root for if I’m watching. (I wouldn’t turn on the TV right now, for instance, and watch Ole Miss and Whoever pound on each other.) But you get the idea. I enjoy a sporting event once in a while. I understand the allure.

But I hate baseball. I hate listening to Scott Simon on NPR on the weekends because the dude can’t go a shift without a baseball story or reference. It’s almost like he’s messing with me at this point. And I’m seriously sick of the mythology of baseball, how baseball is really a story about AMERICA. It is not. What we talk about when we talk about baseball isn’t everyone’s America, it’s masculinity in America.

Which is fine. But I don’t have to read it. And I get to complain about it, too. First of all, it’s my blog and I can say whatever I want. Also, if dude writers (some of whom I happen to be actual friends with and not just Facebook friends with) can get all riled up about how many books by women have women’s feet/shoes on their covers, guess what? Those books aren’t about women’s feet/shoes. They are about a broad range of issues and situations. They just get marketed to women in such a way that an identifiable woman (i.e., a woman with her HEAD INTACT) is a no-no. I won’t get into how women are represented as less than whole in advertising and marketing (oh, wait, I just did). Let’s just call it a problem with lack of imagination in cover design. But, gentlemen, check your content. How can so many of you be writing toward the ivy? How many baseball-as-mythology books can the world stand?

At any rate, you can stop trying to sell them to me. I’d rather read a book about women’s feet.

In other news, I’ve read nothing and written very little. I have to go change that. Rant over.